the personal (and mostly parenthetical) asides of Jake Nassif.

No stars (+23 songs)

AT THE CASUALEST CAFE IN SOUTHEAST MINNEAPOLIS you enter to find young men lying on couches. One stands to greet you. He resurrects a cold pot of coffee with blasts of frothing steam and, without discussion, hands you a cup. “No charge.” You sit. Cryptic wisecracking as he nukes a plate of bacon for a customer consulting a vintage PC. The barista paces, munching handfuls of pepperoni (“gotta have protein, right?”) and smoking not-quite-surreptitiously from a pipe he wears on a lanyard. As you rise to leave, your tepid mug barely touched, he grabs a blanket and returns to his couch, giggling.

You will never go back to this place. But that it exists—ungoverned by the rules of commerce, the law, or basic expectation—is reassuring. Mysteriously beyond failure, it lives without striving.